Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Wednesday praised the planned construction of a light-rail car manufacturing plant along the Los Angeles River, saying it would bring "decent middle-class jobs" and attract clean technology firms to a city hard-hit by the national recession. Italian rail-car maker AnsaldoBreda agreed to build a $70-million plant as part of its successful bid to deliver 100 additional light-rail cars to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The hundreds of glass mirrors break the dusty field in Lancaster, a sea of silver in a landscape of brown. When switched on for the first time today at an opening gala with investors, local politicians and others, they'll make up the first operational solar tower energy facility in the United States. They reflect the sun into a tower in the middle of the field, boiling water into steam that travels through pipes to power a turbine and create electricity.

Getting investors excited about long-lasting batteries was a challenge for Leyden Energy in the early days. Raising funds was even harder. Then came the iPhone. The popularity of Apple's mobile device and other smartphones sent engineers into a frenzy to create batteries that could outlast the power hogs. The Fremont, Calif., lithium-ion battery company was already working on a solution, and as a result it recently raised $20 million in venture funding. Energy storage companies such as Leyden Energy led clean technology investment during the third quarter by raking in $421 million in venture capital, a 1,932% increase from the same period last year, according to an Ernst & Young report.

Sen. John McCain proposed Wednesday to dramatically increase America's commitment to nuclear power, calling for a crash program to build 45 reactors by 2030 and a long-term goal of building 100 such plants across the country.

The Los Angeles Harbor Commission on Wednesday tapped a London-based shipping firm to set up a "green terminal," marking the first time the nation's largest seaport has crafted a lease aimed at reducing air pollution. Commissioners voted 5 to 0 to begin final negotiations with P&O Nedlloyd Container Lines, the world's fourth-largest container shipping firm, which has promised to use cutting-edge clean-air technology at the site.

Whether talking about electric cars or his much-promised "Subway to the Sea," Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has reworked his message during his second term to focus on a single overriding goal: jobs. With more than a quarter-million residents of his city out of work, the mayor has put a new emphasis on job creation after spending much of his first four-year term focused on a spectrum of policy issues such as the environment, education and crime. "I think this is a new appreciation at City Hall for the importance of jobs, since we have lost 340,000 in Los Angeles County since January 2008," said Gary L. Toebben, president of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.

Kids love to crawl through those ball-filled play pits that keep popping up at fast-food restaurants and playgrounds, but their parents often are more concerned about how thousands of multicolored balls are kept clean. Most ball pit operators simply gather balls in mesh bags and hose them down with a germ-killing sanitizer. But playground owners increasingly are turning to higher-tech solutions, such as a mobile unit developed by Scrub-O-Sphere in Long Beach.

California's energy commission has promised millions of dollars to a struggling corn ethanol business founded by a political ally — and generous campaign contributor — to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger despite public assurances that the commission's environmental funds would not be used to subsidize that technology. The money comes from a tax on car owners passed three years ago that goes to a fund for clean-energy technologies. When the fund was set up, its backers said it would not be used for corn ethanol, a decades-old gas additive that many environmental scientists argue is at least as bad for the planet as oil. The decision to use the fund for an ethanol subsidy has the program's creator crying foul.

Taking advantage of greatly reduced stock prices is a tricky business. One strategy is to find an investment area so certain to grow that it will be around long after market traumas subside. Green investing, which offers the added potential that innovative companies will get snapped up by bigger firms, could be one of those areas. Buying stocks of firms that play a significant role in the environment and energy conservation can be highly speculative, as indicated by the beatings so many have taken this year.

Several Silicon Valley venture capital firms said Tuesday that they were joining California universities, think tanks and energy companies to drive commercialization of "clean" energy technologies. The alliance is sponsoring a business-plan competition that will award a year of free office space, legal advice, publicity support and sufficient capital to turn "clean technology" ideas in five categories into stand-alone businesses within the state.